Schiff said the relations between Republicans and Democrats on the committee deteriorated after Nunes secretly visited the White House grounds just one day before announcing incidental surveillance of President Trump’s transition team.

Nunes first claimed last April that a whistleblower had provided him with evidence that Obama administration officials improperly unmasked members of Trump's transition team — information that later turned out to have been provided to him by White House officials.

This, Schiff claimed, was a tipping point for the committee. Up until then, he said, the panel's work had largely been done on a bipartisan basis.

"At that point, I think the chairman of the committee, Devin Nunes, made the decision that this was too dangerous to the president, to continue to investigate what Russia did," Schiff told Castro.

When asked what the committee would've been like if he had been chairman instead of Nunes, Schiff replied it would've been "a very different path."

"I think that when that blew up, it was clear they were on a completely different trajectory. Their mission was no longer investigating Russia but protecting the president," Schiff said.

"Had the majority been in Democratic hands, we would have continued to run a credible and bipartisan investigation of what the Russians did, what role Trump campaign people or anyone else played in the Russian interference."

Nunes's office didn't immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.

House Republicans, however, repeatedly noted during the probe that they view Schiff as a partisan figure on the panel, while Democrats have blasted Nunes's behavior.

Schiff noted that Democrats view the investigation as ongoing and continue to conduct interviews with witnesses on a voluntary basis.

MSNBC on Wednesday released an audio recording of Nunes suggesting at a private event that Republicans must maintain control of the House in order to protect Trump from the Mueller probe.

“If [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions won’t unrecuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones,” Nunes said last week, while speaking at a closed-door event for GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers(Wash.).